The present invention relates to a leveling door for sealing a leveling opening of a coke oven door, in which a flexible sealing element is pressed against a sealing surface surrounding the leveling opening.
During the end phase of the filling process of the oven chambers of coke oven batteries it is necessary to make uniform the height of the coal bulk in the respective filled oven chamber. This is performed with the aid of a leveling rod arranged on the coke ejecting machine. In order to introduce the leveling rod into the oven chamber and reciprocate it inside the chamber, the coke oven door is provided at its machine side in the region of the collecting chamber with a leveling opening which is closed by a leveling door when the leveling rod is withdrawn from the oven chamber. In order to prevent uncontrollable discharge of the gaseous products produced during the coking process, the leveling opening must be tightly closed with the leveling door.
In old leveling door constructions the required sealing was performed with the help of so called hammer strike strips. Hammer strike strips are mounted by clamping screws on the edges of the door body and brought to abutment against a sealing surface which surround the leveling openings by means of hammer strikes. This sealing principle which is identified as "iron-to-iron" requires expensive maintenance and is not always satisfactory with respect to its sealing properties. It operates only in proper conditions when on the one hand the sealing surfaces are retained very clean and on the other hand the temperature position of the seal provides the formation of sufficient quantity of the tar condensate on the sealing surfaces as a lock.
A leveling door is proposed in the German document DE-PS 2,426,476. It has a shell-shaped closing element composed of a material with springy properties. The flexible sealing edge of this closing element is pressed by a force acting in the middle against the sealing surface surrounding the leveling opening. The disadvantage of this construction is that on the one hand the production of such shall-shaped closing element is relatively expensive and on the other hand the force which acts only in the middle does not provide a sufficient adjustment to different conditions on the sealing edge or the sealing surface.